Safety

School Bus Slides Down Icy Road, Crashes Into Car

A Massachusetts school bus is shown on video sliding backward on an icy road and hitting a mailbox and a car. No one was hurt. Screen shot from video by Cheryl Katz via Boston 25 News

SUTTON, Mass. — A school bus here with about 20 students on board lost control on an icy road on Tuesday morning, and it slid downhill until it hit a car, CBS reports.

Video taken and posted on Facebook by Cheryl Katz, a mother of a student who rides the bus, shows the bus at about 7:10 a.m., according to the news source, sliding backward, hitting a mailbox, and coming to rest after slamming into a car that also appeared to have spun out on the ice. No one was hurt in the incident, and the bus driver is not facing an investigation.

Students aboard the bus told CBS that the driver tried to take control of the bus, but was unable to. One student said that the driver “eventually just put [the bus] in park and held on,” according to the news source. Another student told CBS that everyone aboard was scared and no one knew what to do. Parents told Boston 25 News that they received a text message at about 7:35 a.m. notifying them that all school buses had been taken off the roads until they were less icy, as instructed by the Sutton Police Department.

Theodore Friend, the superintendent for Sutton School District, told CBS that he consulted with other superintendents in the area as well as highway departments on Tuesday morning, and thought it would be OK to hold school as usual. He added that there was another incident at noon on Tuesday involving a school van; it hit a pole on the side of the road, injuring a bus aide on board.

Watch the video of the school bus incident, taken by Katz and obtained by Boston 25 News, below.